The bed was so smooth and warm. It was easy to dream….
“…I have come again and again, and there was no tag on the door,” a voice said distantly.
Luca nodded against the silken sheet. The servants should have known not to wake him….
“And so I thought perhaps you meant to bathe yourself, but I—”
Luca woke with a stomach-wrenching start and twisted on the couch, wrapping himself in the emerald and cobalt sheets. A woman stood inside the door, startled as he whirled. “I’m sorry, my lord! I did not realize—I did not mean to wake you!”
Luca kicked his legs free and stumbled over the opposite side of the couch, clutching the sheets from inside the twisted bundle. “What? I’m sorry—I—”
“I’m sorry, my lord. I thought I maybe missed the bell. I—I can go if you’re not yet ready.”
Luca leaned against the wall hangings, his knees trembling within the concealing sheets. She was pleasant-looking and wearing light wrist cuffs. He forced himself to breathe more slowly; they would not send a single female slave to seize him. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to control his voice. “What bell?”
She looked mildly surprised. “The bell, the one here.” She pointed to a tasseled rope hanging in the corner. “For summoning your attendant.”
“Attendant?”
“For scrubbing your back, applying the salts and soaps, for….” Her voice faltered as she looked at the low table, its bowls and bottles and jars mostly emptied and pushed aside now to accommodate the shirt and leggings.
“I took care of that myself, thanks.” Shianan Becknam’s name would be mocked for months to come.
“I see.” She bobbed her head in a slave’s acceptance of a master’s quirks. “Of course. Would you like your massage now?” She indicated the couch with an unsteady gesture.
Fresh terror pulsed through Luca. If she saw…. “No. I don’t want a massage. No, thank you.” He gulped, the soft wall close behind him.
But the woman did not leave. Instead, she looked at the floor and bit at her lip. “Then, maybe, my lord would prefer—would he like—” She hesitated uncomfortably.
Luca wanted nothing more than for her to go, to let him dress and flee. He shifted along the length of the couch.
The woman started toward him, her eyes fixed somewhere in the area of his stomach, her breathing shallow and uncertain. “I will be happy to provide whatever service my lord wishes.”
Luca recoiled from her. “No!”
She reached one hand almost pleadingly toward him, across the couch, and he slapped it away as he stumbled backward.
She stopped, staring at his cuffed arm, and Luca realized his mistake as he backed against the basin. She blinked at him. “You are a slave?”
Perhaps he could beg her not to betray him. “Please, I—”
“No,” she whispered, horrified. “No, I can’t do this.”
“You don’t have to do anything. You can go and pretend you never saw me, just say I never called—”
“No!” She stepped back, staring at her hands. “I would have—no, no!”
Luca tightened the slipping sheets across his torso. “Why did—oh!” He stared at her, suddenly comprehending. “You were sent to—to lie with me?”
She shook her head desperately. “I can’t—not when you’re—no!” She was beginning to cry. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” She was fumbling with a large pouch on her belt, trying to retrieve something. “Look,” she sobbed, “look. I’m sorry—”
“Go!” Luca snapped, turning away. “Get out. You shouldn’t have come; they had no call to send you. They have no—it’s not right to send you for this!”
She sobbed harder and fled toward the door.
“Go!” Luca heard the door close and he clenched his fists, crushing the sheets. Empathetic fury burned through him. They had sent a slave, just another luxury to be enjoyed with the oils and the steam. Only chance separated her from Luca. Only Luca separated her from Sara. You would not have me sell your sister, would you?
Luca yanked at his damp clothing, anxious to leave the luxurious room, now a gilded cell. The attendant in the lobby spoke as he passed, but Luca rushed by him as if he did not exist.
The wind cut coldly through his damp leggings where the cloak shifted with his stride, but Luca did not care. All his anxiety and the sick familiar terror of coercion fueled his growing rage as he stalked toward their quarters. Thrown to a guest’s pleasure like a bone to a hound—!
He flung open the door, expecting no one in the office at the late hour, but Shianan was still at his desk. He looked up with a startled expression. “Luca?”
The angry words stuck in Luca’s mouth. Fury throbbed in his chest and he could not speak it, not toward his master.
Shianan grew concerned. “Luca, what is it?”
His master was waiting. His master, who had sent him to that place and that unhappy slave, waited for his answer. Luca hung a moment without breathing, wavering between righteous outrage and acquiescent subservience.
His master grew impatient. “Luca!”
Luca bowed his head. “Master—come to the practice ring with me?”
Shianan regarded him skeptically. “The practice ring? Now?”
“Please, master!”
Shianan dropped his pen. “Why not?”
Luca’s throat closed and he could not reply. His pulse beat through him. He remained still until Shianan had donned his cloak and reached the door behind him, and then he followed his master outside.
Shianan walked briskly in the cold dark, glancing occasionally at Luca but waiting to see what lay at the practice ring before asking further. Luca swallowed hard against his pounding heart, trying to form his wild thoughts into coherence.
Shianan walked into the ring without hesitation and went directly to the center, where he turned and faced Luca. “Now, what is it?”
Luca’s hands moved without his thought or consent, taking two staves from the rack and tossing one toward his master even as a part of his mind recognized he was killing himself. “Take that, please.”
Shianan caught the staff mid-air and spun it into readiness, his eyebrows rising. “Yes?”
Luca moved forward into the ready posture he had been taught. “How—how dare you?” He swung the staff in a wide, angry arc.
Shianan deflected and stepped back. “What?”
Luca saw in his mind’s eye the frightened woman backing away from him and he swung again at Shianan. “How could you think that would please me—that I would want such a thing? A show of how little we are to you?”
Stop! Stop! he screamed silently. Don’t do this! You can’t do this!
“When it can as easily be me—another plaything for whatever twisted pleasures a rich man can fathom?” He jabbed the end of the staff at Shianan, who parried without returning.
You’re killing yourself!
Shianan slid out of range of the next fierce sweep, his staff quiet in his hands. “What are you talking about?”
“I could never be pleased to see another slave prostituted!”
Shianan’s staff spun and smashed down upon Luca’s, jarring it from his stinging hands and leaving Luca unarmed and half-stooped with the force of the blow, staring breathlessly at his master.
Run! Flee! Beg!
Shianan’s eyes bored into Luca’s. “You say a slave was sent to bed you at the baths?”
Luca’s fury vanished, leaving him utterly alone to face the fruits of his insanity. His breath caught in his throat and made his voice stumble. “Y-yes.”
Shianan straightened, letting his staff come to rest against the ground. “The Kalen baths do not offer prostitutes.”
Heat rose in Luca again. “She was there! She—”
“The Kalen baths do not offer prostitutes,” Shianan repeated firmly. “I am certain of that. Though it’s certainly common enough elsewhere, there was some question of taxation two years ago and it’s been an occasional point of
discussion since. Wait, though—I do believe you when you say a woman came to you.” He frowned.
Luca’s knees began to tremble in the hollow aftermath of his rage, and he did not know whether to straighten to face his master or to drop to his knees and beg for his life.
Shianan looked at Luca again and his puzzled frown faded. “Luca,” he said slowly, and his expression softened. “Stand upright. That was well played.”
“Master?”
Shianan smiled faintly and gestured to the ring about them. “If you are no slave here, you can of course speak freely, even in anger. I give you full credit for using your advantage, though now I’ll remember to avoid this place if I feel you’re giving me trouble.”
Luca breathed.
Shianan spun his staff absently. “Perhaps the Vandogan merchant arranged for an extra service,” he mused. “Did he think that would seal the bargain he missed?”
He did not seem upset. He did not seem even to be thinking of Luca. Luca straightened, his eyes on Shianan’s whirling staff.
He had been angry, he had been angry at his master and at his slavery and at—everything. It had been a long time since he had dared to feel fury.
Shianan shook his head sharply. “Oh, that would be grand—to say the bastard might trade military funds for a pretty piece of flesh.” He spun the staff abruptly into the ground, making Luca jump. “No, that won’t do. Put these away. We’re going to see the Vandogan. I can’t let it be thought that I—” He paused and looked at Luca. “You did refuse her, didn’t you?”
“I never touched her!”
“Right. I didn’t think so.” Shianan started for the ring gate. “Now, Luca! I want to catch him before he sleeps, before he has a chance to tell anyone of the visit.”
Luca hurried to match his pace. “They—they thought I was you.” He gulped, realizing how that might sound. “That is, there was a mark on the token—”
“So I was there tonight, yes? Did I do anything in particular?”
Luca shivered, cold in his damp clothing and emptied wrath. “You—I—you went directly to your room, number seven, and you bathed. You never put a tag on the door for the attendant—I didn’t know, but I couldn’t have—with these—you know—I bathed, I mean you bathed, and then I washed out my clothes because they were so dirty from the—”
Shianan laughed aloud. “You did your laundry? I’m sorry, go on.” He chuckled. “What else?”
“I went to sleep on the couch while I was waiting for them to dry, and she came in, while I was sleeping, and she—she wanted to massage me but I said no, and—she offered—and I was afraid she’d realize and I tried to send her away, but—she saw my wrist cuff and she stopped.” Luca’s face was burning hotly. “Then she was very upset, and I told her to tell no one that she’d seen me, and she left.”
Shianan nodded, taking long strides which made Luca hurry. Then he smiled suddenly. “Luca,” he asked, “if your clothes were drying, then when she came in….”
Luca had not thought it possible for his face to grow hotter, but he had been wrong. “I—I was—I was in the couch, in the sheets….”
“So when she was offering her services, you were naked?”
Luca ducked his head. “I sent her away!”
“I know, I know. I believe you. I was just… picturing it.” Shianan grinned.
The heat of his flush ran down Luca’s neck and back, and he swallowed hard.
“No, Luca, don’t be upset. I was only teasing you.” Shianan smiled to relieve the sting. “Is there anything else I did which I should know about? And is the girl the only one to know you were a slave?”
Luca started to shake his head and then nodded, confusing himself. “I left immediately after she did. And no one else saw my cuffs, I think. I told her to say she hadn’t seen me, but….”
“We’ll see.”
The military guesthouse had few lights in the windows. Shianan frowned and then selected a door at the end of the building, rapping sharply on it. Luca stood to one side and slightly behind him, shivering with the cold and a little afraid of the coming conversation. Would it come out that he had been the one at the baths? The Vandogan merchant could not be anything but offended to find Shianan had passed his gift to a slave. Would the baths’ proprietors demand punishment for the brazen slave?
A light-haired man opened the door, tired but courteous. “Yes?”
“I’m Commander Becknam, and I’ve been discussing a supply contract with your master. May I speak with him?”
The slave looked appropriately contrite. “I’m sorry, my lord, but he’s just had someone else come in. If you’ll wait, I will tell him that you are here, or—”
“Thank you,” Shianan interrupted, “but I will come again later.”
Shianan led Luca around the corner of the guesthouse. “Someone else just arrived, eh? At this hour? Do you think that might be someone from the Kalen?” He eyed the high windows and then pointed to a half-emptied crate. “Help me move this, but quietly. I want to see if you know this visitor.”
Luca thought of the man behind the counter, the slaves he’d passed in the corridor. He didn’t know if he could recognize them again. But he took one end of the crate and set it below a lit window.
Shianan mounted the crate and gestured for Luca to follow. “Stay a little back from the glass. Quietly!” He turned to the window. “Well—is this what I think it is, Luca?”
Luca stepped onto the crate and looked in the window. The unhappy slave woman stood before the Vandogan merchant, her posture plaintive before his angry demeanor. Luca’s blood chilled—what was she telling him?
Shianan tipped his head closer to the window, his jaw hanging slightly as he strained to hear. Luca held his breath and imitated him.
“I tried, master, but he sent me away—”
“One task! I set you one task! Is your freedom so little a prize?”
She drooped, looking even smaller from their high angle. “Master, I did try, I swear—I offered him whatever he wanted, but he wanted none of me….”
“Perhaps he would prefer a pretty boy?” The merchant scowled. “And could you not get within even an arm’s reach of him?”
The woman flushed and bowed her head. “I’m sorry, master. I’m sorry.”
“Then you’ll be successful the next time?”
She bit her lip. “I—I cannot do it, master. I cannot!” She rubbed at her face with the back of her hand and reached into the pouch at her waist. “No matter what you offer.” She withdrew a knife and extended it on flat palms. “Take it back, please, master! Even for my freedom, I cannot kill!”
Luca’s heart stopped.
The merchant seemed to swell in anger. “You defy me?”
She cringed. “It is not defiance to fail—I only…. Why? Why must he die? Master, don’t do this! I cannot let you, I won’t let you kill him—”
The merchant seized the knife with one hand and her hair with the other. She recoiled, eyes wide, and instinctively raised her hands. But the blow swept the hands aside as it carved through her throat. She staggered as the merchant released her, grasping at her gaping, spurting throat with half-severed fingers, and then Luca was on the pavement vomiting and choking, his mind reeling with horror.
“Get up, Luca.” Shianan’s voice was low and curt. “Get up!” He seized Luca’s collar and hauled him to his feet. “Move!” He kicked debris over the puddle of vomit and pushed Luca forward. “Go!”
Luca stumbled across the yard, unable to think, unable to do anything except hurry alongside Shianan. His master kept a hand on his shoulder until they reached Shianan’s own office and quarters, where he turned to latch and lock the door. Luca’s knees failed and he fell beside the desk, trembling and feeling as if he would be sick again.
Shianan stared at the door. “Why?”
She had offered to massage him—she had reached for him, was ordered to bed him for her freedom—but she was to kill him, to kill him with a knife, an
d now she was murdered—
“Luca!” Shianan crouched, forcing Luca to see him rather than the scene in his mind. “Are you all right? Are you with me?”
Luca gulped and nodded. “I—yes.”
“Good. I want you to think back to the baths. Did she say anything more than what you’ve told me?”
Luca stared, unable to recall anything of the baths, unable to think of anything at all.
Shianan took a slow breath. “Luca, stay with me. Think. Someone would have killed you in my place had you not been so scrupulous. He will probably try again, and I need to know everything you might have heard. What did she say when she came to you?”
Luca blinked at him. “She would have killed me, instead.”
“Your particular morality spared you. Now tell me, what did she say?”
Luca closed his eyes and tried to remember her with her throat still closed. “She—she came while I was asleep and—she could have killed me then.” Gooseflesh spread over his arms. “But she said she didn’t realize I was asleep.”
“Maybe she didn’t,” Shianan said. “Go on.”
Luca shook his head. “I told you everything, before. That’s all of it.”
Shianan blew out his breath in frustration. “We know the Vandogan is involved—what is his name? Karlm. Who else is part of this, and why? Why me?” He straightened and turned away to pace. “In his room, did you see anything that—”
Luca vomited again, his body spasming to reject the bloody image scorched into his memory of the room. He coughed and spat, his eyes tearing, and realized Shianan was beside him, one hand on his back. “I’m sorry,” Luca managed.
“Most new soldiers react in some way,” Shianan said, “and they’re expecting to see it, on a battlefield. Not in a guesthouse.” He stood and went into the next room. A moment later he returned with a handful of dried rushes for lighting the fire and candles and dropped them over the viscous puddle. “Most new soldiers, though, have the courtesy to be outside.” He smiled grimly and held out a cup toward Luca.
Luca took it, weak and miserable, and sipped automatically at the water.
“Karlm’s slave will say I came to see him, but is he likely to guess that I spied through his window?” Shianan stared across the room, looking empty and faintly stunned. “Why me? What advantage to a merchant could there be in killing me?”
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